Rental housing professionals assemble in Lone Star State for Cultivate’s educational and leadership opportunities. 

The room is quiet with only the projectors’ hum. Attendees are reflecting on their mental health, changing mindsets and how to become better versions of themselves professionally and personally as Cultivate comes to a close.  

“Culture is magic; you can’t explain it; it doesn’t make scientific sense,” says Peter Lynch, Cultivate emcee and Chief People Officer with Cardinal Group Companies, referencing the unexplained growth in strength seen in Belgian work horses that when pulling together far outweigh their own individual capabilities and performances.  

On Sept. 26 and 27, rental housing professionals gathered in Austin, Texas, to recharge their batteries and gain new information about how to “Futurize” their leadership, the theme of this year’s event. And like our equine friends, attendees are realizing how much more efficient and effective teams can be when staff capabilities are enhanced by leaders and co-workers to create the best environment.  

Peers Helping Peers  

Like many other industry events and educational conferences, Cultivate has the goal of providing knowledge to attendees, or cultivators, for them to bring home to their offices and colleagues. Unlike many other industry events and educational conferences, Cultivate provides attendees the opportunity to learn from their fellow industry peers in a more intimate and secluded setting. “People come here with an intention versus just showing up to see what happens…so I think being able to come to things like this intimately to close those gaps, it’s very useful,” says Jeremy Milton, Vice President of Property Management with West Shore.  

“I would say the quality of the conversations and the quality of the interaction, because it’s so small, you can actually meet everyone here,” says Jared Miller, who presented at Cultivate about company culture. “It’s very transparent because I think it’s such a small group; they’re open to share where they may not otherwise. So, I’ve taken a lot from that.”  

One example of this is the fishbowl-style educational session layout.  

“The fishbowl concept is really just a large discussion, facilitated in a way where everyone can share their thoughts and ideas while bringing their opportunities, challenges, or specific situations into the room for a conversation,” says Jonakan O’Steen, CEO, Executive Consultant of Jonakan O’Steen Consulting. “This lets the group process together, while importantly, retaining individual sharing on an issue. For me, it is this form of peer-to-peer learning that makes this experience so unique, and it’s my favorite part.”  

This close-knit experience allows attendees the ability to gather knowledge and information from their peers, even those across sectors. 

“What I love about Cultivate is it is such a unique experience—we’re speaking to peers and we’re having that opportunity to network and problem solve for things that we’re seeing while we’re giving insights and information of things that we’ve seen success in,” says Erica White, SVP of Technology & Strategic Initiatives with Article Student Living. “We also want to hear what other organizations are doing because we are specific, we’re in a niche environment, we’re student housing. So, we want to see what other issues or what experiences others are having.” 

The educational session menu at Cultivate is not affected by its more private atmosphere, hosting topics ranging from net operating income to employee communication to enhancements in staffing. This gives presenters and cultivators the ability to gather with each other and discuss the most relevant issues impacting the industry today, rather than say, sit in a room with 500 attendees and hear from a subject matter expert on the U.S. economy or another larger, umbrella topic. Both relevant and valuable information, but different approaches to gleaning that knowledge and how it is broadcast to attendees, and in turn, their fellow staff members when they return to their work environments.  

“No matter where we are in our careers, we have to keep educating ourselves because we will get left behind,” says Tracy Bowers, Managing Partner with Gallery Residential. “So, you do that with podcasts, books, events like this, and you need to always be learning.”   

Often, larger gatherings can be overwhelming for attendees and others involved in the conference. “You come back depleted because you have exerted all of this energy and you’re always on,” says Ishea Shepherd, Assistant Vice President with AMC Delancey Group. “Cultivate is a conference for senior leaders to recharge and fill up our batteries with information.” 

Details Matter  

Cultivate is the perfect place to find out, “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Because rental housing professionals attend in solitary, many face the same challenges—many hopeful to find the same solutions.  

“It’s definitely the intimacy in a conference like this, but it’s also a safe environment,” says Jacklyn Arnest, SVP of Marketing and Communications with Article Student Living. “With so many of us that have grown up being an active member of NAA…it allows us to not necessarily have the egos involved, the guards up, so we can really identify the ugly in our business—the challenges that we’re facing, we can open book it and solve it together, which we don’t always have time to [do at the office.]” Arnest finds conferences such as Cultivate extremely helpful by bringing everyone together in one place. “Getting everybody together on a call is quite difficult even from a committee level sometimes. So, when we can really say, ‘Today, we want to walk out of the room with the challenge solved or a fast follow-up to solve that challenge together,’ it’s a privilege. It’s absolutely phenomenal, and that’s why we love being here.”   

Attendees learned about vulnerability and to be honest about struggles as a leader. Collaboration, cross-functional teams and problem solving are key to balance that fear.  

Several attendees took the unexpected leap forward during challenging circumstances, and they shared those experiences on stage with attendees. These ranged from personal to professional anecdotes from battling cancer to culture shock in a new city.  

“What I really love is that it is more of that intimate environment where you’re going to get that one-on-one time; you’re going to have that setting to where people feel vulnerable,” says White. “They can talk about real-life issues and you can dial into the problems that you’re seeing or the success that you’re having.”  

Shepherd says: “I’m futurizing my leadership with collaboration. When I came into the industry, people weren’t always willing to share their secrets and things were siloed information, but Cultivate is such a good example that companies can share wisdom and leaders can join together to say, ‘This is working for you, this is working for me. And how can we all grow our industry and our organizations together?’”  

Futurizing Leadership  

Attendees now have the skills, tools and knowledge to make an impact on their teams. To futurize leadership, one must have an open mind for a better way to accomplish something, according to Lynch.  

Keynote speaker Diana Kander expressed the importance of never goaling alone as a way to achieve the end result faster. The New York Times bestselling author of “The Curiosity Muscle” had attendees question their scale of growth by comparing rappers Vanilla Ice and Snoop Dogg.  

Experts are innovators who see possibilities in the future, according to Kander, who concluded with a poem crafted with her own rhythm and cadence.  

Make room on a calendar for curiosity, says Kander, who does so with after-action slide-by-slide reviews of her keynotes. She focuses on how she can improve after each one. Try to add curiosity before and after projects to help grow and improve with each one.  

O’Steen is questioning assumptions, embracing new ideas and changing—as it relates to reinventing and rethinking out of necessity rather than threat or fear. “Identifying talent in hidden places within our organizations is critical. Knowing our people, building more of a lattice where someone is able to move across the organization into different roles in order to build their skillset before or in addition to moving up a ladder, makes a great difference when developing, upskilling and reskilling talent. Truly being mindful about how we’re growing individually and together in the direction of the business, and within our evolving industry is key. Change is constant and what we do with it is our business. But, our business should be about successful transformation. Change and transformation is an inside job as well as an external one!”  

Michael Miller is NAA’s Managing Editor.